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119058-morning-coffee-112514-rainy-day-edition
Content ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- Some thoughts for you Esper: 1) It's finals season for folks in school, plus holidays coming up. I think a lot of people are playing less not because they want to, but because they have to. Probably best to wait until after holidays are over to stress too much over population. 2) Grinds are in the eye of the beholder. I detest grinds with a fiery and explosive passion. Like, to the point where I'll quit a game or just refuse to play part of it over a grind. But for me a grind is defined as a repetitive, unfun activity that I am forced to do in order to advance. Based on that definition, there's very little in Wildstar that I'd consider a grind - possibly prestige, but I'm not a big PvPer anyway. I get my elder gems from dungeons and adventures (which I enjoy doing), I get my money from crafting and selling things (which I also enjoy doing), and I do "dailies" about once every other week when I'm bored and just want to kill things. Is it the most efficient method? Probably not. But it's fun, and keeps me from burning out on the game. Just something to think about. 3) For guilds, groups, and raiding - I think you want to find a group that's focused on having fun first, progression second. I see a lot of guilds talking about 3 or 4 raid nights a week and it makes me grimace. I don't think it's really possible to maintain that schedule without either having a big, impersonal guild, or without burning people out and having a lot of churn in your raid team. But a lot of people get caught up in progression and forget to pace themselves, and it leads to problems in the end. I joke with my guildies sometimes that my job is to hold everyone in our guild back a little bit. So for example when we start raiding Daggers will only have one raid night a week, maybe two tops. But that's on purpose. We don't want to turn the game into a job, and we don't want one single aspect of the game to become the only thing that we do together. That way we keep folks interested and keep our community together longer. I'm sure there are other guilds with similar outlooks out there (at least, I'd hope so), so maybe you could find one of those Domside and join up with them. Either way, best of luck, and if you need to take a break, no worries. Sometimes it helps to take some time off :) | |} ---- Is exactly what I think of Wildstar's leveling process. :P That said, I'm not sure I've ever played an MMO that didn't feel grindy to me so it's not an accusation against WS in partiular. I'm convinced at this point that repetitive and forced are mandatory parts of MMO leveling, while unfun is certainly the more subjective part. In the case of Wildstar I don't think I've ever really had fun with the leveling though. Reading some stuff, enjoying the sights, searching out decor for my house, sure... but the combat and quests, like in FFAAR, GW2, SWTOR, and RIFT, all feel pretty yawntastic to me after the first 20 levels.Some folks would come at me with, "Well then MMOs aren't for you". Which I think is a sad reply, because there are a lot of things I DO like about MMOs, usually coming from endgame gameplay and social development, and with Wildstar, housing. But yea... MMOs are not typically intellectually challenging gameplay. You don't see people making competitions for leveling, ya know? :P As for your other two points, I'm not sure finals are a valid explanation for any possible population decline; based on stuff I've read, the average MMO gamer these days is not in university. I'm sure it's contributing though, along with holidays. For casual raiding, I really don't think Wildstar offers the scene for that kind of thing. Your guild (sadly Exile) is the only guild I've heard of that's considering two raid nights a week. Every guild post I've seen in the recruitment forums for Entity is 3-4 nights... literally, every single one I read. :( I just don't think it's possible to be casually invested in the gameplay dynamics of Wildstar. The dungeons are too hard, the raids too inaccessible. For some folks wiping repeatedly to train friends can be a blast, but that's very much 'been there' for me. After ten years of MMOs, I'm not super enthusiastic about the idea of taking a month or two to complete a dungeon, it's just not my style of fun. :P | |} ---- ---- ---- Dungeons are 70% skill and 30% gear, in my experience. The gear *definitely* helps, but the majority of fights are about positioning, timing, and quick reactions. Someone can have the best gear in the world, and if they're not good at those things, they'll lose every time. So something to think about: My Esper is currently level 25. The quests in her journal are still level 18. Why? Because I've only really pulled her out to do Stormtalon and KV runs since she hit 20. Fully rested, she gets a level about once per dungeon in normal mode. I think there's a myth that dungeons aren't good exp. I'm pretty sure it's a myth. But I just wanted to point out that it's entirely possible to level up by doing the group content, which I think is the part of the game you enjoy. Sure, you'll have to do some quests in the gaps - like right now I'm trying to finish Galeras on her and get her to Whitevale just to "catch up" a bit - but that also means you don't need to feel compelled to go do every single quest out there. The trick is really linking up with a guild that's willing/able to do normal mode runs so that you're doing the content at-level. That also helps you build the skills for handling the vet modes at 50. At any rate, it's ok if the game doesn't really do it for you. Different things appeal to different people, and those things change over time. I am a huge explorer and a slow leveler. In most MMOs that I have played, I spend 1-2 years playing and exploring before I get to the level cap. In Wildstar it was 2 and a half months. By my own standards, Wildstar should completely bore me to tears - the world's too small, the leveling too fast, the open-world quests a little too simple, with not enough thinking involved. But what it's got that other MMOs don't is a player skill requirement. I've had too many years of games where it all boiled down to numbers, or where the content was so easy that I could turn off my brain and still win. Wildstar's combat system and encounter design is what keeps me coming back, because it's challenging me to be a better player, and not just to build a better character. Well, that and the music. | |} ---- Normal mode sounds pretty boring but ojay. I'm just bored in general and need a change. | |} ---- ---- Yeah, finding the right guild is the tricky part. I understand where you're coming from completely, there. In our case - we just decided to build it. I do hope that the Dominion population gets bigger/more active over time. It's wrong that there is such a dichotomy between the two factions. | |} ---- ---- I think people should be able to flag their skyplot as a "neutral" area to enable cross-faction RP. I mean, Malgrave beach parties were an Evindra tradition. I think there are actually plans for same-faction PvP, to help with queue times. I could be wrong about that. Cooperative PvE is tricky, since so much of the storyline is still tied to the factions. For example, you couldn't cooperatively do War of the Wilds or Siege of Tempest Refuge. It just wouldn't make sense. Still, it's something that could potentially happen with future content, I guess. | |} ---- Actually, it's not RPers that hate that idea. It was RPers really leading the charge for cross-faction and/or nonfaction stuff at first. We're who the crossfaction addons were made for. I know I'm for it, but I think an important part is not to trivialize the faction content. That can be done, though, I think. I may make a post about that someday. You can make it feel dangerous to be speaking with the other side or thought of as a traitor. It'd be kind of interesting to have a "shades of grey" kind of faction mechanic. | |} ---- I think in those instances it would easily be resolved by something as simple as an imposed disguise. Possibly randomize what "team" it is doing defense/offense and have those not natively that faction changed over. Similar to how when Dominion do Riot in the Void the opening part has us disguised as exiles to speak with exile inmates at the beginning... Also yes there are plans to do same faction pvp, but sadly from the sound of things it won't be in drop 4. | |} ---- ---- So you only get the extra gems after you're already capped? Interesting... Not a big issue for me since i do mine early on a weekend day, while most people are still throwing things at their alarm clocks or staring cross eyed into a cup of coffee. | |} ---- That's the rumor I've heard, I have yet to verify it (hence the SCIENCE! bit). Hard factioning is a dinosaur idea that needs to die a painful screaming death. It's a cheap and lazy technique used to foster PvP. In theory. In practice you get significant faction imbalance to the point that where faction transfers are an expected feature and PvP queuing must be augmented with same faction (eg. exercises) matches. | |} ---- ---- Oh? It gives the tokens like we got from boom boxes? *checks* mission.... waHEY! 10 Platinum :blink: (I guess that's a typo :lol:) | |} ---- ---- ---- ----